nto her ear at the moment of their
introduction.

"So you," she murmured, "are the wonderful Baron de Grost. I have heard
of you so often."

"Wonderful!" Peter repeated, with twinkling eyes. "I have never
been called that before. I feel that I have no claims whatever to
distinction, especially in a gathering like this."

She shrugged her shoulders and glanced carelessly across the room.

"They are well enough," she admitted, "but one wearies of genius on
every side of one. Genius is not the best thing in the world to live
with, you know. It has whims and fancies. For instance, look at these
rooms--the gloom, the obscurity--and I love so much the light."

Peter smiled.

"It is the privilege of genius," he remarked, "to have whims and to
indulge in them."

She sighed.

"To do Andrea justice," she said, "it is, perhaps, scarcely a whim that
he chooses to receive his guests in semi-darkness. He has weak eyes
and he is much too vain to wear spectacles. Tell me, you know every one
here?"

"No one," Peter declared. "Please enlighten me, if you think it
necessary. For myself," he added, dropping his voice a little, "I feel
that the happiness of my evening is assured, without making any further
acquaintances."

"But you came as the guest of Mademoiselle Celaire," she reminded him,
doubtfully, with a faint regretful sigh and a provocative gleam in her
eyes.

"I saw Mademoiselle Celaire to-night for the first time for years,"
Peter replied. "I called to see her in her dressing-room and she claimed
me for an escort this evening. I am, alas! a very occasional wanderer in
the pleasant paths of Bohemia."

"If that is really true," she murmured, "I suppose I must tell you
something about the people, or you will feel that you have wasted your
opportunity."

"Mademoiselle," Peter whispered.

She held out her hand and laughed into his face.

"No!" she interrupted. "I shall do my duty. Opposite you is Mademoiselle
Trezani, the famous singer at Covent Garden. Do I need to tell you that,
I wonder? Rudolf Maesterling, the dramatist, stands behind her there
in the corner. He is talking to the wonderful Cleo, whom all the world
knows. Monsieur Guyer there, he is manager, I believe, of the Alhambra;
and talking to him is Marborg, the great pianist. One of the ladies
talking to my brother is Esther Braithwaite, whom, of course, you know
by sight; she is leading lady, is she not, at the Hilarity? The other
is Miss Ransome; th